| free 3D editor |
| JeroenNL | Hi there,
We're developing a (free) 3D editor called DeleD for game-development teams/hobbyists and I'm wondering if some of you guys an' girls out here could use such a thing. And if so, what would be your specific needs?
For more info and downloads visit http://www.delgine.com.
Bye,
JeroenNL/Delgine Team |
| Eric Coleman | Free stuff is always usefull. :-)
One of the things I look for is the ability to either export data to a text file that's human readable or some scripting ability to export my own data. The ultimate goal is to get the data from the 3D modeling program into a game, and that generally requires converting into a specific format for the game. In my experience text files are easier to use when converting to your own file format. Existing formats, such as DirectX's .X files are either slow and bloated or for things like quake or doom formats they dont' have the correct features.
Besides a text file export, the next thing I would need would be animation support, or more specifically skeltal animation support.
That pretty much covers the basics. You create the 3D models, animate them, then export them into a format that can be used by your own conversion tools to import it into your game. |
| DevlinSE | I'm always looking for an easier way to skin the models, so if you can mix in some of the features of this [url="http://www.unwrap3d.com/index.aspx"]UnWrapper[/url] with the simplicity and ease of use of [url="http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/"]MilkShape[/url]. Then you have a winner.
I wish I could just put those two in a blender [:p]. |
| JeroenNL | @ Eric: DeleD is exporting to its own ASCII format (DMF files). Very easy to read and understand imho. Convertors can easily be written to transform the data to your local game-format. Animation won't be implemented as DeleD is intented to be a level-editor, not a fullscale modeller. :)
@DevlinSE: DeleD already has basic skinning options (auto-generate UV coords using planar mapping and move/scale/flip/cycle UV coords) but more skinning functions will be implemented in the near future. |
| Knight Chat X | I've looked at some of the screenshots, it looks very good, one thing that would be good is to keep things as simple as possible yet still functional. One problem I've seen in more complicated graphics programs, be it a modeler for a gaming, VRML, or a paint program, is the craming of so many features into one box. Right now the simplicity looks to be there which should result in rapid development, good features include format support for importing and exporting taking in mind users may or may not use other modelers and may wish to convert to and from your program to do things, also so it may be used within your own program without needing extra plugins to interact, ability to create and modify basic 3D and complex low polygonal objects, ability to apply materials, option to convert 3D object into 2D sprite and save as image file. Animation is a big key even for level development, games which include animated world effects for things such as a glowing ball, an explosion, or something in the world that moves like a door would take time off a developers hands to program the manual movement of a door, anything that makes modeling, simple texturing, materialing, organization, and creation and object placement easier is probably enough in most cases.
Having multiple views for the editor where you can change views and easily move around is important too, on a few tools I've noticed movement to be a problem and in some rare cases more complicated than should be especially if you can't use undo to reset your position.
For format support, the wave front object is adequate and supported by most graphics modeler programs and used widely for object conversions to and from so that would be good to have. Exporting to an x-file be it ASCII/X-File Compressed/Reduced Polygonal/Raw is important for standard mesh support in DirectX, dunno bout Open GL.
Just thought of something else, maybe a conversion of object views from 3D to 2D.
Bounding box or sphere object with ability to calculate and display the results, this feature could be used to make collision detection easier maybe, if a manually sized primitive object which is partially transparent or wireframe view is used. |
| JeroenNL | quote:
Originally posted by Knight Chat X
I've looked at some of the screenshots, it looks very good, one thing that would be good is to keep things as simple as possible yet still functional. One problem I've seen in more complicated graphics programs, be it a modeler for a gaming, VRML, or a paint program, is the craming of so many features into one box. Right now the simplicity looks to be there which should result in rapid development
Animation is a big key even for level development, games which include animated world effects for things such as a glowing ball, an explosion, or something in the world that moves like a door would take time off a developers hands to program the manual movement of a door, anything that makes modeling, simple texturing, materialing, organization, and creation and object placement easier is probably enough in most cases.
For format support, the wave front object is adequate and supported by most graphics modeler programs and used widely for object conversions to and from so that would be good to have. Exporting to an x-file be it ASCII/X-File Compressed/Reduced Polygonal/Raw is important for standard mesh support in DirectX, dunno bout Open GL.
Thanks for your suggestions! :) As for simplicity, I cannot agree with you more. Most of the apps out there are just too complicated to get used to quickly so we will keep DeleD's userinterface plain and simple while still offering enough functionality.
Animation won't be part of the package however because it involves quite a huge amount of time and effort. Time that we don't have atm. Instead we will be concentrating on implementing CSG and skinning modules.
Support for multiple fileformats is added by implementing plugins. We already support importing OBJ and 3DS and exporting X (ascii). B3D (Blitzbasic) and DBO (Darkbasic) plugins are on their way. |
| Knight Chat X | Well, if you did consider adding simple animation some day it shouldn't be too difficult, the big part of it for absolute animation would consist of simply saving the same data that's in a single frame, if you can save an object to an x-file and load it into a program and it display exactly as it does in that single frame/object file in the same exact position and orientation, you could manually create/set keys that stores each objects position and orientation.
Example 1:
Move object towards left.
Save position information etc.
Do this again for each frame.
Example 2 (Animation Save):
frame1.x
frame2.x
frame3.x
frame4.x
frame5.x
If it's too hard and takes too long to work out how to save the whole animation to one x-file, try simply saving a new x-file for every frame in the animation. This would save having to do this the hard way by moving the 3D object, and clicking file/save repeatedly until the entire desired animation is dumped. The downside to this is file size, since this creates more objects which are basically copies of an existing object, however, not a problem for simple animations.
An alternative to the above method would be simply dump the position and orientation information to a textfile that a game developer could use to load into a program and read off the animation coordinates and set the mesh object coordinates to match, that'd have to be done for each object connected to a parent mesh, this can also serve as a re-usable clip method.
This would atleast cut development time down even more when dealing with animations which aren't relative, if the animation is relative (meaning a user will be placing animation in a place inside the 3D world in a program other than exactly where it was when saved and the position varies) abosolute would not be used as the coordinates would be variable inside the program, if you can save an objects position without centering, the object saved will more than likely already be ready for relative animation in a program, you'd omit XZ movement, and save only the rotation and scaling info.
As for timing, no need to even think about it as that can be handled programmatically inside the program.
The first thing after I get used to the interface testing DeleD will be how easy it will be for me to create animated frames for things such as a simple tank head rotation. |
| AutoAim | render to bmp would be nice though you probably could just hit the Print Screen key, also make it so the camera could be switched easly to Iso veiw to create ISO sprites and tiles, instead of having to guess like i do on my current model editor, or aleast show the camera cords. and lock onto the center axises (0,0,0) |